Thursday, January 31, 2008

With a new season of "Lost" on the air, ABC is getting in gear with another promotion campaign centered on Oceanic Airlines, the carrier whose doomed Flight 815 crashed onto the mysterious island with our friends, the Losties. ABC previously conducted viral campaigns on the Web, with a fake Oceanic Airlines Web site and another one for the Dharma Initiative.

The new Oceanic Airlines effort is going more mainstream: Oceanic Airlines billboards have been spotted in Ames, Iowa among other places, and one newspaper story said that to add to the drama those billboards "were later 'defaced' to redirect those who saw them to another website with additional dramatic story elements and even clue hunting games to find out more information about storylines."

and there were bogus commercials for the airline on "Eli Stone," the show that followed "Lost." Scenes of pretty female flight attendants were interrupted by flitting black-and-white images of a man in a seemingly frantic state of mind, seeming to be a "Lost"-style passenger stranded in a horrific situation, trying to broadcast a message to the outside world. Also seen is a glimpse of part of an Oceanic Airlines plane underwater, perhaps at the bottom of the ocean. These ads also promote an Oceanic Airlines Web site, FlyOceanicAir.com.

UPDATE: I've checked out FlyOceanicAir.com, and it has the greeting from the flight attendants seen in the TV commercial, which is followed by a clip of the man we saw glimpses of in the commercial. Turns out he's the boyfriend of a flight attendant on Flight 815 and is looking to find answers regarding what happened to the doomed flight... and his message directs you to another site, Find 815. The site invites you to play an online game and join the mission of the man, Sam Thomas, to find out what happened to the flight and his girlfriend.

The FlyOceanicAir.com site also contains a press release that announces that Oceanic Airlines is resuming service.